“Is this your phone, Anna?” I asked my oldest child. I suppose the lavender case should have given it away, but I am not always aware of what the pieces of technology my family members carry around for communication purposes look like.
“Yes, that’s my phone,” Anna
said.
“It looks like you’ll have to
recharge it soon,” I commented.
“What?” Anna looked at the phone. “Oh no,” she said. “It has 6 percent charge left. That will keep it going for another couple of
hours for certain.”
I looked askance at my eldest
daughter. Surely she had not learned
such cavalier behavior from her dear father.
Climb high mountains, shoot for the moon -- but be sure your phone is charged first...
“There’s something going around
Facebook about changing your voice mail message if you are lost in the woods
and your battery is low and you don’t have service,” I said. “I don’t think that would work because if you
don’t have service you can’t change your voicemail message, so I’m trying to
prevent that from happening.”
Anna looked me like I needed to
check into a behavioral unit. “Dad, I’m
right here,” she said. “I don’t think I’m
about to get lost in the woods.”
“That’s what you think,” I
said. “But what percent of people who
got lost in the woods expected to get lost? It's all fun and games and six percent battery life and then 'poof,' Lost in the Woods!”
With these words of wisdom, I
left the conversation. Clearly, Anna
wasn’t planning to charge her phone until it got down to some reasonable number -- say one or two percent battery life and she probably wasn’t going to get lost
in the woods in the next couple of hours either.
I have always thought that
people tend to find themselves polarized around things like cell phone
batteries and gas tanks. There are some
people who feel comfortable driving around with the gas light on in their car,
while others are filling up when their vehicle gets to the half tank mark.
I tend towards the compulsive
filling the tank and charging my phone camp.
I hate getting anywhere close to empty, either in my vehicle or my phone.
It is easy to plug your phone
in when it is getting low on battery and relatively easy to fill your gas
tank.
Much harder than that is to
deal with situations where we are emotionally or physically depleted. What can you do to bring your emotional
battery level back into the green zone?
There are lots of things that
have been written on the subject, but I believe a good place to start is to
know our own limitations and then have a plan for regular times to
recharge. Those times must include a
break from draining activities and deliberate inclusion of things that we enjoy
doing and that don’t leave us more weary than before.
More than that, spending time with
Jesus is really important. He said, “Come
to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew
11:28)
If I am honest, I am not always
good at following my own prescription. I
need rest. I need time with Jesus. And yet…
it is all too easy to try to squeeze one more thing into my packed
schedule. When I do this, I am not the
only one who suffers – the people who live with me and experience my resulting grouchiness suffer too.
So it is that Jesus offers us rest. For He knows that a life lived at
six percent battery level is not in good shape – even if we never get lost in
the woods.
Love this!! Very true.
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